How to Compare SEO to Banner Ads, Bulk Email or Affiliate Programs

SEO, or search engine optimization, is a popular means of "promoting" a Web site and thereby marketing online. Effective SEO can propel a Web site higher into the search engine results and produce a lot of traffic, resulting in healthy sales. However, there are other methods of marketing online that are worthy of consideration that can also, if done properly, produce good results. Banner ads have been around a long time, and although waning in effectiveness, they can still be effective if done properly. Bulk email can also be very effective, but this method of promotion has been seriously abused by some. Affiliate programs are another way of promoting a product by getting an army of affiliates to do the actual selling for you.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

1. Create a Web site that adheres to good SEO practices, with a document title that includes your main keyword, a keyword meta tag, a description tag, a page title that includes your main keyword inside an H1 tag, and around 300 words of text with a 2% to 5% density for your main keyword. Also include several secondary keywords within the text body.
2. Implement banner ads as a means of advertising your product, Web site or promotion. Banner ads can be shown in an exchange environment, where your ad will be shown an equal number of times on another Web site for each time you show someone else's banner ad on your Web site. Or you can pay an advertising publisher to display your banner ads on a given number of web sites by prior arrangement.
3. Market to interested people by means of bulk mail, but be very careful to do it properly. In order to market through bulk mail, you first need a mailing list. Although they can be bought, it is always best to create your own opt-in list. In fact, it is seriously advised to do so as any other way of doing it could be considered spam. Once you have a list, and every email on it has willingly opted in, you can send out offers from time to time and expect a percentage to respond.
4. Set up an affiliate program for your product to leverage the power of affiliates selling your product in exchange for a commission. This is a very popular method of promotion. It is a win-win situation where everyone benefits. There are many programs that can manage an affiliate program, or you can tap into some of the more popular existing affiliate programs, such as ClickBank, for example.

Tips & Warnings

• Marketing with SEO, bulk email, or affiliate programs does require some prior knowledge to implement properly. It is a sensible idea to first gain the necessary knowledge before considering these types of marketing.
• Create a simple text message that doesn't look like an ad for your banner ad. It will work best every time.
• Marketing with banner ads is not as cost-effective as it once was. Avoid the all-singing, all-dancing type of banner ad. People do not, by and large, like these types of banner ads.
• Setting up your own affiliate program is likely to be difficult for a novice. To begin with, it is usually best to tap into existing affiliate network.